A Slow Descent into Madness
by Silent Violent Lzzy
Summary: Alfred just wanted a date to the prom, but Natalia has other plans. Alfred gets swept up her incestuous, maddening web as we venture to the mental hospital with Belarus.
1. Love VS Insanity

Alfred was officially dateless. He realized this after being turned down for the ninth time that week after his last chance with a girl named Kiku, who ultimately said she was going with someone else. The lonely and forever alone blond walked out of school that Friday, dateless for the senior prom that was supposed to be the following day. "Damn it!" Alfred punched a tree and ultimately bruised his hand. "Owowowowowowowowowow!" He shook his wrist vigorously before hearing a choked sob coming from his right. He looked up and followed a path on top of the school's stone wall that blocked students from climbing into classes through the window. There, sat a girl with long platinum blond hair who was sobbing into her purple uniform dress, and Alfred cocked his head as if to augment his hearing. Maybe she would go with him? He was desperate at this point, and he honestly didn't remember seeing her before.

"Um… Hey?" Alfred called, and the girl refused to look up from her hands. What was up with this chick?

"What do you want?" called the mysterious girl, still sobbing. Her tears followed an epic path from her face to the ground ten feet below only adding to the mystique of their meeting.

"Well, you're kind of crying so..." Alfred said awkwardly. Going out on a limb, he called, "You know he isn't worth it!" The girl looked up, her face still tear-stained, her eyes filled with pain.

"Who isn't?" she asked, clearly on edge.

"Whoever you're crying over, he isn't worth your tears." The girl jumped down from the wall, which was no easy feat in a skirt. She wiped her face and stuck out her hand. "I'm Natalia, but I insist you call me Nat, my friends call me Nat. And the guy I'm crying over: His name is Ivan and he's a Russian douchebag...who also happens to be my brother."

"Ah." Alfred tried to nod his head as if he understood, even though he truly had no idea what the fuck was going on here. "Well uh... Why are you crying? What'd your brother do?"

"He won't marry me. He wants to become one with everybody but me. I say keep it in the family but he's all 'go home!' so I just said 'screw it' and here I am." Natalia said, affecting a valley-girl accent for Ivan's lines as she told her story. She seemed to have no sense of how screwed up that was. "Well okay, I'm going to go now; I'll see you…never." Alfred said, speed walking away. Before he could get even a meter away, he felt an iron grip on his forearm. "You're not going anywhere." Nat said, even though Alfred had his back turned to her, he could hear the devious smile in her voice. She had the crazy eyes. He should have known.

Alfred's eyes went wide as he felt the tug on his forearm and looked down to see the devilish smile on the girl's face. Whether he liked it or not, he guessed he was going to have to get involved with this girl. "Uhm, could you- I dunno... Let go of my arm now?"

"Do you want me to hurt you? Because even though I love you, I can make you feel pain worse than death."

"Dude! I was just walking around school. Can you stop digging your fingers into my arm?"

After that Alfred simply blanked out. Jesus- couldn't someone give him a break here? All he wanted was a date to the prom, so he didn't look like a fucking loser. However, the only girl left was a psychopathic bitch. His status as the hero presented him as brave but he was seriously scared of this girl: Had she just said she loved him? Alfred tried prying his arm away but the girl was strong, believe it or not, and the blond thought he would have to get a pairs of scissors and cut her arm off first "How can you love me if you've only known me for about two seconds?" Alfred raised an eyebrow at the girl still hugging his arm and sighed.

"It's a disorder or something-at least that's what the weird people in the white coats told me. First it was my sister, then my brother... now you..." She looked at him with crazy, dark blue eyes, turbulent as the ocean. "I love you now, Alfred. And when I love something, I'd rather it die than leave me."

"Really? I mean I know I'm the hero and I've got this dark aura of mystique around me, but there's still Ivan, I mean, he may be a douchebag, but he was playing hard to get there's potential there, right?" Alfred said, speeding over his words, his mind working faster than his mouth.

"Stop talking about my brother, you sound like the freaking police he called from the government to protect him. 'you can't go in there, he doesn't love you' Yeah, right, if he didn't love me then why did he write me this love note." She asked, eyebrow raised as she held up a restraining order.

"Well it sounds like you need some time to sort this out, so I'll just leave you to that." And Alfred ran faster than he ever had before, away from school where, hopefully, there would be some witnesses.

Natalia stared at Alfred who ran away and started growling before hopping over the wall and running after the blond. "Come back here Alfred! You will become one with me whether you like it or not!"

Noooo!" Alfred screamed like a little girl and ran off into the darkness of a nearby alleyway. Without really noticing he ran past some men with white coats, whom he disregarded. Little did he know he know they would be his saviors. He ran to end of the alley and turned back to behold a crushing tableaux.

Natalia, tears and mascara running down her face, struggled futilely against some men in white coats, who he sincerely hoped were doctors and not kidnappers. They attempted to soothe her with little phrases like "There, there." that really meant nothing at all and only served to aggravate the situation. A look of pure fear and pain in her eyes, she fought and cried as they threw her into an ambulance. It was the perfect picture of insanity."Alfred- Alfred come back!" Natalia screamed. Eventually she lost sight of him which filled her with unmistakable dread as her last chance of being rescued slowly faded away along with her consciousness. She hadn't meant to scare him off. She guessed she was desperate: lonely even. She grabbed on tight and never let go of anyone she loved, including her brother.

She'd been by Ivan's side her entire life. Nevertheless, he'd thrown her away too. What was it that she was doing wrong? Why were people scared of her? She just wanted love. That was the root of all her insanity. She had been born into a cold, dark world with only her brother and sister as companions. Eventually, as her sister grew distant and eventually moved out to live autonomously, her brother was the only one left to hold her hand through life and even he resented her. She relied on him completely those first few years after her sister moved out. The feelings of strong familial love she felt for Ivan were confusing and as insanity took hold of her, those feelings became sexual and here she was today, slowly losing consciousness on the floor of what was essentially a padded van. Doubtless, when she woke up she would be bound and alone, left to live out her years in solitude because she had dared to love deeply and passionately enough to stalk and murder and cause pain wherever she went.


	2. Waking Nightmares

"This girl is clinically insane, with schizophrenia most likely. She's been committed here six times already in the course of her life. I thinks it's time for an operation." A stern, male voice said above Natalia as she slowly returned to consciousness. How long had she been asleep? Judging by her ravenous hunger and the stiffness of her limbs, it must have been days. She tried to open her eyelids but they felt as heavy as marble. She struggled impotently to move her lips, to make a sound, to do anything to let them know she was alive and conscious. She refused to be a passive participant in some sort of barbaric operation which would most likely rob her further of her mental faculties.

"UGHHH." She managed to make a sound that was more demonic than anything else. At least it was something. The feeling of dry, scratching pain in her throat told it might have cost her her voice for the moment though.

"What the hell? Is she awake?" A different, more skittish-sounding voice exclaimed, checking her bonds as Natalia's eyes flickered open. White lights beat down on her, blinding her before her eyes adjusted to the ample lighting in what she could only assume was to be her cell.

"I see you're awake, Natalia?" Said the male. They timed these sort of things, she knew: made the medicine only so strong as to last a specific amount of time and then, in a pathetic show of force, questioned you brutally when you're only half awake and ,by their very estimate, insane. It wasn't as if he cared when or if she woke up.

Natalia felt weak, and her arms were strapped to the bed she was laying on, so she couldn't move. Her paralysis was made all the more terrifying by her complete powerlessness to resist the German standing above her.

"Ngh...Ludwig?" She grunted her recognition.

"I heard you assaulted a junior at your high school: Is that true?" asked Ludwig abruptly. Powerful flashbacks of Alfred played with flickering light behind her eyes like silent movies.

"No." Natalia whimpered. She hadn't exactly assaulted him. Maybe she had grabbed his arm and threatened him, but that was hardly grounds for assault. This only seemed to aggravate the doctor and further escalate the situation.

Ludwig put his hand meaningfully on her helpless arm and proceeded to grasp it with a painful iron grip.

"Tsk tsk tsk, wrong answer Nat, let me tell you right now that it is not in your best interest to lie to me.

You see you've been admitted here quite a few times, a lethal number of times actually. When you've been admitted this many times, I am legally allowed to sign you off to be lobotomized."

"Don't threaten me, you coward. And don't call me Nat. My friends call me Nat." Natalia growled, struggling furiously at the chains that bound her.

Just then a high-pitched, girly voice came over the intercom system into the room: "DOITSU DOITSU I'M OUT OF ORANGE JUICE!"

The voice belonged to a whiny Italian, looking at his empty glass of orange juice and frowning at it. "Doitsu..." He mumbled, pouting. He actually had orange juice in the fridge; he just wanted to see the doctor that had been assigned to him. He couldn't help but feel protected around the strong German doctor: He felt like he would never have to deal with any sorts of problems so long as he was around.

"Yes Feliciano?" Asked Ludwig when he finally reached the Italian's hospital room. The Italian pouted lightly and pointed at his glass of orange juice, indicating for the German to fill it. The German sighed before getting some out of the fridge in the Italian's room and pouring him some.

"I swear you Italians can't do anything on your own." It was meant to be an insult, but Feliciano still smiled.

Meanwhile, Natalia thanked the god she didn't believe in when Ludwig finally left. She lazily picked up her feet from the bed and tried to maneuver her body in a way where her feet could reach to the counter at her bedside and grab the key to the cuffs. She knew where they hid them because she'd broken out so many times before that they didn't feel to need to try and be creative. Natalia rubbed her raw wrists and sighed.

"Ugh... Alfred..." Tears formed in Natalia's eyes again, and she began to sob into her dress. Life just wasn't fair. The only thing she feared more than loneliness or the insanity she possessed was the prospect of a lobotomy; living out the rest of her life as a non-functioning vegetable was a prospect worse than death. Her insanity was unpredictable and emotionally destructive, but at least it allowed her to feel something. The highs were unthinkably high, and the lows were unthinkably low. By her estimate, the highs were worth risking everything for.

Alfred was haunted daily in his nightmares by images of crying girls, wracked with insanity. Each night he saw a parade of them with cheerless, dead eyes, marching toward him, cornering him in the alleyway where he had escaped from Natalia for the first time and only time. The leader of the mob of misfits was always a deathly calm and glassy eyed Natalia. She would move toward him, as though to kiss him or caress his head but instead pull out a lobotomy needle. He awoke with the weapon millimeters from his watering eye, screaming into the darkness of his room.

Tonight was different, though. Alfred found himself unable to shove his emotions of fear and guilt into a box in the back of his mind. He couldn't process this dream anymore. He had to take a walk. Surely this mindless activity would distract him from his overactive imagination.

After walking for what seemed like hours, Alfred sat down on a park bench, thinking of what he had just dreamt. Anyone else would have written a sad poem in their journal and moved on, but Alfred wasn't anyone else. He was the hero, if only the self-named hero. _All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing._ He kept repeating that to himself as he rose and began to run down the street. He slowly began to realize something that his subconscious brain had known all along: That girl wasn't crazy;there was a lucidness and clarity to her that he couldn't bring himself to forget. Besides, he had a feeling she was in danger, and, gradually, a plan began to form.

"Ludwig! There's a boy in the courtyard that thinks he's a superhero. I think he's on drugs." A younger doctor informed the blond German as he was lounging in the break room. He pulled on his white coat over his scrubs and sprinted into the courtyard where patients were sometimes allowed to play baseball.

A blond, American looking boy with glasses and a brown jacket was screaming into the wind: "I'm the hero! I'm the hero! Evil will not triumph!"

For a moment, Ludwig indulged the civilian in himself and stared in awe. It was quite a spectacle, someone so normal looking turned insane by the very insanity of the world around him. Then, the intense feeling of wonder passed as quickly as it had come, and he snapped his fingers impatiently:

"Admit him, and take him into Kiku's empty room. Pray, make haste. He'll wake the rest of the patients."

And so began Alfred's adventures in the mental hospital.


	3. Most in the Insane Asylum

Alfred woke up feeling drowsy and stoned. The strange thing was he didn't remember getting high although he was pretty certain last night had been crazy beyond belief. He spent his first few minutes of consciousness staring off into the distance, not really seeing. A pleasant white blur surrounded him, soothing the sharp new consciousness that enveloped him. Brief flashes of agonizing, half-formed memories, some of them lustful, blazed like racing cars through his mind as though there was something he needed and or wanted desperately to remember but was unable to. It had something to do with...? Hell, he didn't know, but whatever he smoked last night was some good stuff. That Tony dude knew where to get his weed.

Then, suddenly, he felt a small but sharp pain in his arm followed by a jolt of energy mixed with a terrible realization: He was in the mental hospital with Natalia. The high feeling had been from the sedative, not weed. _Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck_, he thought initially, allowing his new found energy to be channeled into a growing panic. He hadn't thought this far ahead. Leaping into the mental hospital with Natalia had seemed heroic and noble at the time, but now what was he going to do? As he returned to full mental awareness, he began the process of re-remembering Natalia: her face, her hair, the raw lucidity in her eyes, which, ironically enough, caused most to condemn her as crazy upon sight. He had no reservations that he wanted to save her, but now he wasn't sure this was the way.

A voice sounded above him flinging him from his reverie: "That 's enough Thorazine for you." The voice's owner said softly but pointedly to herself, withdrawing the needle from his arm. "Oh good, you're awake. I'm Elizaveta; I'll be your loony bin doctor today, blah, blah, blah." He already liked her.

Natalia tapped her bare foot impatiently on the carpeted floor of the waiting room outside of Ludwig's office. Was this quack seriously going to make her wait? Apparently, because it had been around twenty minutes since she had first arrived, and there was no sign of the big, important doctor.

She stared over at the intern who had escorted her from her room to this God-forsaken place. He was busily scrawling who-knows-what into a yellow legal pad, trying desperately to avoid eye contact with her whenever possible, while still furtively tracking her every move. Since the moment she set on eyes on him, she had disliked him, but up until now, it had been a blind, irrational dislike, the kind that was not only accepted but encouraged among fellow mental patients. Looking him up and down unabashedly, she pinpointed the source of her hatred: He was afraid of her. Everything about him screamed it: the way he avoided eye contact, his unwillingness to simply have a conversation with her, the way he acted as though he had been badly burned when his hand accidentally brushed up against her arm. And, as though that wasn't enough, insult was added to injury when she began to recognize the root of his fear; talking to and touching her would be acknowledging that they were equals or somehow alike. She saw in his eyes that was certain death for him.

"You know we're not so different, you and I." She said, breaking the tense silence between them . She said this only to mess with him, but if it made him think a little, that wouldn't be such a bad thing either.

The intern jumped, no doubt startled by the sound of Natalia's voice: After all, this was the first time he had heard it. "Wha- what do you mean?" He stuttered, clearly flustered by her sudden attentions, which seemed to rise out of the pool of endless indifference which she had cultivated over their past week of acquaintance. It was fair question as he had not been privy to the extensive inner dialogue that had taken place in the decision to say this. From his perspective, she had simply said this apropos of nothing.

Before she could explain her meaning to him, she was grabbed roughly by the forearm and dragged in the direction of Ludwig's office.

"What? Why are you-" She began, but Ludwig put a hand over her mouth and set her down in a chair in his office. He removed his hand and spoke in a hurried, no-nonsense tone:

"I don't have time to be nice. We have to start. Begin talking, preferably about your childhood issues so that we can get right to the point, but you can also display your blissful denial of your condition if you'd like or blame me for all the problems in your life. It's really your choice and that's the beauty of therapy." Ludwig said, pouring himself a glass of straight whiskey.

"As much as I'd love to lay my childhood issues out on a buffet table for you pick over, I'm going to go ahead and skip all the aforementioned choices and ask you, straight up (yes that was a pun, laugh), whether you, as a doctor, ought to be drinking as it is exactly 10:02 AM." Natalia deflected.

Becoming suddenly hysterical, Ludwig replied: "Well how else do you expect me to get through the morning?! I've got patient after patient after patient, each one as angry as the next, expecting me to be able to fix their psychological issues." Falling back into monotone, he continued, "See? That was me attempting to act crazier than you, in order to make you feel like it's less of a big deal for you to spill your guts in front of me. Did it work?"

"Why are you being so honest? Is that another doctor trick?" The rest of the appointment went similarly, with no actual work getting done because Ludwig always had to be the wacky one in a straight man-fuuny man duo. How the hell had he gotten in psychology? It was time for lunch anyway.


End file.
